


Follow the Light

by ShowMeAHero



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Death Fix, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff, Future Fic, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Light Angst, Post-Canon, Post-Episode: s08e06 The Iron Throne, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 09:35:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18891949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShowMeAHero/pseuds/ShowMeAHero
Summary: Sansa has the strangest sense of déjà vu as she stands in the snow and watches people filing into Winterfell, though it is so different now than it was when she was a child. Then, they awaited an unknown king and queen, and hundreds of others besides.Now, they do not await a king and a queen, but a lord and a lady who are her brother-in-law and her sister-in-law, and the king and his hand who are her brother and her husband, and are all the more excited for it.





	Follow the Light

**Author's Note:**

> i won't lie to you. i'm still intoxicated and the episode only ended like an hour ago. but i had to do something. i hope this is coherent enough to enjoy. there's no plot. it's just fluff. we've earned it.
> 
> Title taken from ["The Call"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCEUpVukAe8) by Regina Spektor.

Sansa has the strangest sense of déjà vu as she stands in the snow and watches people filing into Winterfell, though it is so different now than it was when she was a child. Then, she had craned her neck, trying to be subtle as she looked for the boy who would become her betrothed and, later, her tormentor. Then, they awaited an unknown king and queen, and hundreds of others besides. Then, she had no idea what the world was like, how it would treat her, how she would come out the other end.

Now, she stands as still as her mother had all those years ago. Now, her children are lined up alongside her, just as her father had once done with her and her own siblings. Now, they do not await a king and a queen, but a lord and a lady who are her brother-in-law and her sister-in-law, and the king and his hand who are her brother and her husband, and are all the more excited for it. Her eldest — Catelyn, a daughter with Tully coloring — stands beside her, chin up. She has them lined in age order: Catelyn is first, of course, at age twelve; fair blonde Eddard after her, age ten; dark, long-faced Robbert, age nine; red-haired twins, Theon and Marna, age six; and silver-haired Jeyne, only three. Still another is yet to be named.

Jeyne fidgets, and Sansa leans forward to look at her. After a moment of eye contact, Sansa motions to her with her hand, and Jeyne comes running to her, clutching to the bottom of her gown and hiding in the folds of the fabric.

“She should be in line,” Cat whispers.

“She’s only three,” Sansa replies. “You were just the same at her age.” Sansa strokes white-blonde hair back from Jeyne’s face with her long fingers. “You used to follow your father around everywhere, you always hid behind him when guests arrived. Of course, until your ninth name day, when _he_ could hide behind _you.”_

Cat’s lips twitch in a smile she’s trying to suppress. “I could always crouch now,” she says, and Sansa almost laughs out loud.

“What a sight to see,” Sansa comments drily. “The Lady of Winterfell, crouched behind her lord father.”

“When did he become the Lord of Winterfell rather than Casterly Rock?” Cat asks. “I just mean, he’s the Hand of the King regardless—” she tries, but Sansa just laughs.

“I could—” Ned begins, but Sansa waves a hand at him. She’s heard this before.

“You could not,” Sansa says. “I am not allowing a ten-year-old Northern boy to rule at Casterly Rock.” Ned rolls his eyes. Sansa wonders, not for the first time, if she misnamed her son; Ned acts far more like a terrifying combination of her brother Robb and herself at that age than he does his own namesake.

“I have Southern blood,” Ned argues.

“You _look_ like a Southerner,” Robb agrees.

“Well, compared to _you,_ anybody would,” Ned replies.

“Robb just looks like a Stark,” Sansa says, trying to make peace. Luckily, her son does it for her when he interrupts her with a shout.

“It’s them!” Theon exclaims, and Marna grabs his hand, nearly bouncing. Jeyne hides further in Sansa’s gown, resisting Cat’s beckoning hand. She shakes her head at her older sister when she reaches for her, finally just pulling her mother’s skirt over her head. Sansa can feel her clinging to her leg underneath her skirts, and she laughs.

“She’s lost to us,” Sansa says, and feels more than hears her child’s sniffled laugh smothered against her calf. The family carriage comes through the gates just then, banners and men and horses and carts and the whole party pulling up behind. If Sansa knows Brienne — and by now, she’d say she knows her better than most — she hates everything about this. The look on Brienne’s face when she steps from the carriage only confirms it.

“My lady,” Brienne says, but Sansa waves her off as she opens her arms for a hug. Brienne smiles, embraces her, and Sansa sees Jaime moving beside her in a flash of yellow hair. After him comes her husband, and then her brother. Sansa falls to one knee to pull Tyrion into an embrace, and he kisses her on the cheek. His hands go to her rounded middle, and he grins at her, kissing her again. He pulls back after a moment, looking down at her legs in confusion.

“Jeyne,” Sansa tells him.

“Ah,” Tyrion replies, grinning again. He crouches and lifts the corner of Sansa’s skirt. Jeyne peeks out. Once she realizes who has found her, she throws herself into her father’s arms.

“Oh, so you’ll go to _him,”_ Cat comments.

“Who wouldn’t?” Tyrion says. Jaime comes up beside Sansa and takes one of her hands, lifting it above her head. She spins dutifully, laughing, then does the same thing to him.

“As radiant as ever, my queen," Jaime says, as kind and sweet as any good brother-in-law should be.

“You are glowing,” Brienne says. Jaime smacks Tyrion on the back.

“I thought I told you to take a breath, brother,” Jaime comments. “Was six not enough?”

“Seven is a lucky number, is it not?” Tyrion says. “Plus, you never know when we’ll need to replace one of them.”

 _“Father,”_ Cat admonishes, and Tyrion turns on her for an embrace, as well. She hugs him tightly, seemingly never wanting to let go.

“You’re going to name the seventh after me, aren’t you?” Jaime asks.

“The Queen was fairly insistent in her letters on naming the child Rickon, if they’re a boy,” Tyrion tells him. There’s silence for a moment.

“Jaime works for a girl, as well,” Jaime finally says, and Sansa smiles. Brienne turns to the carriage.

“Come on, it’s not that cold,” she calls. Her eldest, Galladon, a boy of thirteen, climbs out of the carriage, holding his four-year-old sister, Joanna; eight-year-old Selwyn scrambles out after them, his year-old brother, Renly, in his arms. All four of them are as blonde as their parents, and they follow Brienne like ducklings as she moves down the line to greet her nieces and nephews.

“We’ll still make a knight of you yet, won’t we?” Sansa comments to Joanna when she’s put down and runs to her for a hug. She pulls back and lifts her chin, hands on her hips; she’s still a foot shorter than Tyrion, her uncle right beside her, but with her parentage, she’ll tower over all of them soon enough.

“Mother says I’ll be a knight soon,” she says. Jaime scoops her off the ground and sticks her on his shoulders.

“Not _too_ soon,” Jaime says. Joanna grabs fistfuls of his hair and holds on tightly; Jaime winces comically and winks at Jeyne, still clinging to Tyrion, looking up at them with open joy and excitement. Brienne crouches down and scoops up her niece, settles her on her hip, and Jeyne smiles before hiding her face in her aunt’s shoulder.

“Come inside, you must be freezing,” Sansa tells them, and Selwyn takes off with Renly at a run for the main doors. Robb tries to hide his laugh at his Southern cousin and mostly fails. “Such a long journey.”

“I only regret that we both can’t make it more often,” Tyrion says. “I fear Joanna growing up without my positive influence while I’m in the North.”

“A tragedy, that,” Brienne comments drily. “Do you two not see enough of each other?”

“Hardly,” Tyrion says, at the same time Jaime says, _“Yes,”_ and they both laugh. It’s been years since Tyrion dug Jaime out at King’s Landing and set him in his boat to save him from Daenerys’ wrath, and years since Jon killed Daenerys and Jaime was unearthed hiding in Tarth, and years since Bran was made King of the Six Kingdoms, and years and years and years have passed in the meantime of the chaos of war. Sansa has settled as Queen in the North; she is _happy._ She misses Arya, and she misses Jon, but she knows she’s meant to remain in Winterfell, meant to be Ned Stark’s daughter, meant to rule the North.

Sansa also hasn’t seen Tyrion in a few months, and she didn’t even get to tell him before he left they were having another child; she had had to send a raven about it. He seems reluctant to leave her side, now, grasping her hand as they head indoors, into the hot-spring-warm halls of Winterfell. Sansa guides him back to the dining hall, and takes her seat at the head. Tyrion sits beside her; he is the Hand of the King, certainly, but he is still married to her, and is still the Lord of the North. Her family sits around her: Bran takes his place, and Sansa’s children sit near him; Jaime and Brienne are after them, and their children after them. Sansa feels warm, overwhelmed with family when she has so dearly missed them all.

“Father, _look,”_ Ned insists, before removing a blade from his pocket and balancing it at the point on the tip of a finger. Tyrion laughs, even as Sansa shakes her head, smiling only a little. Jeyne comes up between Sansa and Tyrion, having escaped her minders, and she pulls on Tyrion’s sleeve.

“I’ve missed you,” Jeyne says simply. Tyrion is nothing if not a loving father, and he pulls her up into his lap and lets her wrap her arms around his neck as he holds her close. He looks at Sansa over their daughter’s head.

“If it weren’t already done, I’d suggest having another,” Tyrion says. Sansa smiles. “How are you, by the way? I feel terrible not having asked earlier.”

“I’m wonderful,” Sansa tells him. She looks out at her people, at the feasting Northmen and their families, at the citizens of King’s Landing who have joined them here in her home. She has known peace in the last thirteen years, in a way she had not thought possible before that, during the wars. Tyrion takes her hand and kisses the back of it.

“I’m delighted to hear it,” Tyrion says. He spends part of his time in the North, and the other part of his time in King’s Landing, with Bran, fixing his life’s mistakes. Sansa misses him when he’s gone, and is anxiously dreading his next departure, when he intends to bring Cat and Ned with him. For now, though, it is only them, her family in the North.

“How are my darling nieces and nephews?” Sansa asks of Brienne. She had left Winterfell pregnant thirteen years ago, heading to King’s Landing to find only destruction wrought by dragon’s fire and war, but now Galladon sits tall and proud beside his parents, a product of one of the most terrifying times of their lives. Renly is passed down to her in response, and she takes her nephew happily, settling him in her lap. “Hello, Renly. A pleasure to see you with your eyes open.”

“He’s got quite a personality,” Jaime tells her, leaning over the table, resting his chin in his hand to watch his son. “He’ll rule something someday, I’m sure of it.”

“You say that every time,” Brienne says, fond. “Of all of them.”

“And if there’s another, I’ll say it of them, as well,” Jaime tells her. “Look at them. Kings, all.”

“Queens,” Joanna amends, from her seat in her mother’s lap. She looks concerned for a moment, then says, “Can knights also be queens?”

“I don’t see why not,” Jaime says. “Your mother is _my_ queen.”

“I _will_ strike you down here and now,” Brienne tells him, and the threat isn’t entirely empty, Sansa notes with a smile. She looks down at Renly, who looks back up at her happily, all bright green eyes and smiling round face. Sansa measures him up, as if she could somehow accurately place him on a council in his infancy.

“He’s a child, not yet a lord,” Tyrion comments, as if he could read her mind. He was always the more doting parent.

“He can be both,” Sansa comments. Cat leans over, and Sansa passes the infant to her, Cat cooing and happy to see her cousin. Sansa props her elbow on one armrest of her seat, leaning into Tyrion’s space. “I’ve missed you.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Tyrion says. Beyond them, Jaime and Brienne are happily debating with Joanna whether or not a queen may be a member of her own Queensguard. Bran is watching his six-year-old twin niece and nephew eagerly tell him everything he’s missed since last they saw him. It is an incomplete portrait of her family, but better than she has had for the past several months. “How has the North been treating you, my Queen?”

“Well,” Sansa answers. He reaches out to lay a hand against her rounded middle, to feel their newest child. She smiles at him and lays a hand over his. Jeyne rests her head against her father’s chest, tips her head back to look at him. Sansa squeezes Tyrion’s hand. “The North has treated me very well.”

“Good,” Tyrion says. His voice is soft, only for her. Sansa smiles at him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can follow me on Twitter at [@nicolelianesolo](https://twitter.com/nicoIodeon) or on Tumblr at [andillwriteyouatragedy](http://andillwriteyouatragedy.tumblr.com/).


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